


Avengers Forever

by blueberrysebby



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Fix-It, Avengers: Endgame AU, Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie) Compliant, Bucky Barnes Feels, Bucky Barnes Has Nightmares, Bucky Barnes Recovering, Canon Divergence - Avengers: Endgame (Movie), CarolValkyrie, Everyone Is Alive, Everyone Needs A Hug, F/F, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Happy Ending, How Do I Tag, Kinda, M/M, Nobody is Dead, Not Avengers: Endgame (Movie) Compliant, Oblivious Steve Rogers, POV Bucky Barnes, POV Steve Rogers, Pepperony - Freeform, Post-Avengers: Infinity War Part 1 (Movie), Soppy Steve Rogers, Steve Rogers Feels, Stucky - Freeform, Stucky-centric, Thanos (Marvel) Dies, as it should have been, basically a re-write of Endgame, but everyone else plays a big part too, but nobody else really, dunno why i mention this but i guess there aren't so many of us, encouraged by seb stan, endgame upset me so much i finally did it, even for loki, hehe, i can't tag really, i guess, lila and cassie become bffs, male writer, this is my first fanfic, thorki are bros, tooth-rotting stucky fluff, we make our own canon here, who needs the mcu when we have ao3
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-16
Updated: 2019-07-16
Packaged: 2020-06-29 19:25:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 15,346
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19836943
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blueberrysebby/pseuds/blueberrysebby
Summary: Everything is like in Endgame, except it's not. All that needs to happen happens, but entirely differently. No permanent harm inflicted. Except on Thanos. In the end, everyone is alive and happy. I don't care if that's unrealistic - we're literally talking superheroes here. :P





	Avengers Forever

“Good. Focus. Just like that.”

Clint corrected his daughter’s posture a little, then jokingly covered her left eye with a bundle of her hair.

“Focus I said”, he smirked when she began to giggle. He swished his other hand across her right eye before withdrawing with a chuckle.

“That’s it. Now aim and let go.” Thwack. Bull’s eye. He couldn’t help but grin proudly. “Good shot, Hawkeye.” He high-fived her before she went to fetch the arrow and he looked down at the boys playing catch on the meadow and Laura preparing hot dogs.

“Alright you two, come down, picnic’s ready!”

“Lila!” he called. “Come on, you heard Mum.”

“Coming, Dad!” she replied from behind the tree as he turned back – and froze. The meadow was empty, abandoned. Where seconds before there had been Laura and the boys, now there were gusts of flaky ash floating mid-air.

“Laura?! Boys?!” He hurtled towards the table. “Where are…”

“Dad!” Lila came running to him. “Dad, did you see that?! They just – they just dissolved! Wh – Mum! Nathaniel…”

“Lila, what do you mean, they dissolved?” Clint grabbed his daughter by the shoulders.

“Th – they…” But she couldn’t talk, she just twitched and crashed against his chest, dropping the bow and arrow, sobbing. He stuck his nose in her hair and stared into the void. What was this?

Hours later, Lila had helped him remove his electronic tag that he’d actually been glad about having. He had tried to retire before and it had all gone to shit in the wink of an eye. This had at least given him the opportunity to be with his family. He placed the shackle on the couch table and switched on the TV but he didn’t look. His eyes and mind were still out on the meadow, dark meanwhile. Its sudden emptiness seemed to suck him in.

“Dad!” Lila’s voice tore him back. He drew a sharp breath through his teeth. “Look!”

But as a matter of fact, there was nothing there to look at. There was a static coming from the TV, a nerve-wrecking noise, and a test screen he’d last seen before any of the children had even been born.

“What the…”

They tried fixing the antenna, but that wasn’t the problem, it seemed. The radio was dead, too.

“We’re not the only ones, Dad”, Lila murmured suddenly, her phone in her hands. “It’s all over the web. People turning into dust. Missing.”

“What kind of shit is this?” Clint whispered under his breath. “Lila, come on, grab some things and let’s move. I know someone who might know what all this is about.” Lila just nodded and rose to leave. Clint grabbed his phone. “L…Lang, Scott.” He hit ‘call’. But no one answered. He tried three times. He had talked to Scott only the other day. Not that they were besties, but they did share a fate, in a certain way, and their trials after the airport events had brought them closer than expected. Clint flung the phone on the couch and tried to remember bits of their talk. Scott had said something about an experiment. A quantum tunnel or something. Now, there were three possibilities: 1) Scott wasn’t answering because he, too, had somehow turned to dust, 2) that experiment had something to do with all this, 3) he just didn’t hear his phone for some reason. In the light of whatever was happening right now, though, Clint feared that number three was the least likely one. “Lila!” he called. “Hurry up!” Then he pressed his eyes shut in an effort to block it all out before heading to the shed behind the house to fetch some things he hadn’t laid eyes on in about two years.

When they arrived at Scott’s place two days later – they had no other opportunity than to take the car -, it was just like it had been throughout their journey there: eerily quiet. The people they saw often had deranged looks on their faces, somewhere between bottomless despair and anger and still-lasting confusion. Nothing seemed to work properly anymore. Crashed cars were all over the highways. Posters of missing people were stuck on every lantern, every tree or pole along the roads.

The time after ringing the doorbell seemed to extend into the endless. Lila was staring at her feet. Then suddenly a face appeared behind the door. And some more seconds later, a small girl, about eight years old, opened up.

“Hey”, Clint said as softly and unintimidatingly as he could, for a moment forgetting the bow and quiver on his shoulder. “You’re Cassie, right?” The girl nodded. “Is your dad home? We really need to talk to him.”

The girl looked him up and down several times, then she said: “You’re Clint Barton.” It wasn’t even a question. “Dad told me about you. And the others.” Then she remembered what he’d asked. “He hasn’t been home for two days. And…” She suddenly started sobbing. “Nobody… They all… My mom…she just _fell apart_.” She stepped back from the door, wiping her eyes and nose on her sleeve. Clint and Lila entered the house and shut the door behind them before looking for the kitchen and sitting down at the table. Lila had taken Cassie by the hand.

“I’m Lila”, she said. “My mum and brothers also fell apart. That’s why we’re here.” She hoisted Cassie on her lap.

“Cassie”, Clint addressed her, “when and where did you last see your dad?”

Cassie snivelled, then replied: “Two days ago, here. Mum was just coming to fetch me so he and Hope and Hank and Janet could go do their experiment.”

“What kind of experiment – did he say anything about that?”

“He said something about a quantum tunnel”, Cassie mumbled, suddenly seeming a lot older than she was. “I think he needs my help. I should have been his sidekick all along.” She had stopped crying and there was a look of determination on her face.

Nobody even really cared when they entered the Pym building. But that only helped them so much. “Where to now?” Lila asked. “Did your dad say anything about where the tunnel was?”

“In the van”, Cassie responded, unfazed.

“In the van?!” Clint repeated doubtfully. “Are you sure you didn’t…” But then he remembered Scott’s stunt with the truck at the airport. “Tell me, where would you park a truck in this building if you didn’t need to worry about how to get it there?” Lila threw him a sceptical look.

“Why’d you put a car in a building like this?”

“Not _in_ ”, said Cassie. “ _On_.”

In the elevator, Clint turned to Cassie. “So, what’s that whole sidekick thing about? Does your dad have a sidekick and if yes, why isn’t it you?” He tried a smile.

“He’s already got Hope”, Cassie shrugged. “And he said I’m too small.”

“Well, I’d take you as a sidekick”, Clint said. “I’ve only got this bag of noodles here.” He nudged Lila in the side and the girls both giggled.

They were right – on the rectangular roof of the building there was the brown van, and right next to it, abandoned lab tables with various devices on them that none of them could really make sense of. Suddenly, Cassie discovered the microphone hanging down from one of the devices, and picked it up. Right next to it there lay a tiny earpiece, and two more several feet away. Cassie, who had seen her dad wear one, hooked it immediately onto her ear and whispered: “Dad? Dad are you in there somewhere? Can you hear me?” Clint and Lila had followed her example and were waiting with strained faces.

“Cassie?” there suddenly was Scott’s voice, through lots of static noise. “Cassie! What…?” “Dad, I’m here with Clint and Lila, we… Where are you even?”

“I’m subatomic, honey. In the quantum realm. Now tell me, where are Hank, Hope and Janet? Why is Clint…”

“Dad, how do we get you out of there?”

“Press the control return button, as far as I know…”

Cassie brought down the mic. “Push it, Clint!” Clint was already looking for it, then hit it with so much force the table wobbled a bit. The blink of an eye later, Scott landed on his knees behind the van.

“Cassie!” She ran and hugged him before he could even remove his helmet. “Now where…” Clint and Lila came up to them.

“That’s the thing, Scott”, Clint interrupted his friend. “How long have you been in there?” “Some minutes maybe, why?”

“You called me the day before you wanted to do this, Scott. That was three days ago.” “But…that’d mean I was in there for what – two entire days?!”

“Yeah, Dad”, Cassie mumbled into the nook of his neck. “Everyone was suddenly gone.” Scott just furrowed his brow.

“Gone? What do you mean gone, I…”

“Throughout the past two days, there’ve been mysterious disappearances all over the planet, Scott. People turning literally into dust. Nobody knows what this is about.”

“So you’re saying, Hope and…” Scott made a pained flinch at the thought. Clint and Lila nodded in unison.

“I’m afraid so”, Clint muttered bitterly.

“Mum and my brothers did”, Lila added. “That’s why we’re here. And we thought you might know more about this.” She looked at Scott. Clint nodded slowly.

“Listen, pal, I don’t wanna…imply anything here, but is it possible that this has anything to do with”, he pointed at the van with the quantum tunnel, “that thing there?” Scott immediately shook his head vehemently.

“It’s just a little quantum tunnel, Clint. And we had it fully under control. No way. There’s something else behind this.”

“Alright”, Clint huffed with a hint of sarcasm, “but what?”

“We’ve both been out of the game for a while, Clint”, Scott said with Cassie propped on his knee. “Maybe the others know what this is about.”

“If they don’t, I don’t know who else would”, sighed Clint. “Alright then. Let’s get moving.”

Tony looked at Pepper with tears in his eyes, their new-born child in both their arms between them. Its tininess made Tony doubt all logic in the world. Pepper looked exhausted but overwhelmingly happy. Tony leaned in to kiss her forehead, could almost feel her hair under his hand when a loud clanking noise woke him up. In the blurry, reddish-rusty distance he could make out the blue smudge that was Nebula scavenging for whatever through the umpteenth heap of rubble, waste and dirt. Tony’s eyes and cheeks were stinging. His left side had burned and hurt for long enough before going almost entirely numb. His suit was completely defunct. He couldn’t remember when he had left the broken spacecraft for the last time to lie against exactly the same heap of garbage that the kid had dissolved into dust on, right here in his arms. He was just waiting now, waiting to follow. In sleep, everything was better. He was with Pepper every time, when in reality he didn’t even know if she was still alive. He didn’t allow the thought. He wished so much he could at least have talked to her, because in his dreams he talked to her all the time, but never about war, never about the end, about this. A gust of the wind that had scattered Peter’s ashes brushed his face and cooled the sweat on his feverish brow. He could never have thought it would end like this. Sometimes now he wished it had ended right there ten years ago in the desert. God, it seemed like a lifetime ago. It would have spared him so much pain. But it would also have stolen him many beautiful hours, friendships, achievements. It would have stolen him Pepper, too. And for nothing in the world would he trade her.

He stretched out and sank a little further down against a rock. Closed his eyes. Despite the inflammation spreading through his body, he was cold all over. His arms were so numb he had barely been able to lift them for days. Now the numbness was in his shoulders, chest and neck as well. His stomach had ached like it was eating itself for a while. Now all he could feel was the simultaneous tightness and excess of the skin on his face when he smiled emptily into the void before closing his eyes. Then, everything went bright. Slowly, until it was as though he were falling into the sun. So this was what it felt like. This was it. He exhaled deeply, almost relieved. And it faded out.

Suddenly, a voice shot through him like a shrapnel.

“Stark!” Nebula’s voice was high and harsh. Everything was bright again. The light beat painfully against his eyes, even through closed lids. Just as he opened them up, the sheen faded away.

Carol Danvers stood over him, the last blast of light withdrawing in a flicker through her short golden hair while she gazed at Tony with the tiniest of smiles. Behind her there was Valkyrie on her Pegasus, blue cape floating softly on the Titan wind. Next to her, Korg, a machine gun in one arm and Miek in the other.

“We’re here to save you, Tony.”

He had no idea who they were, but for now he didn’t even care.

Tony let out a deep sob, then he passed out.

Thanos looked across the plains below the mountain where his cottage was. Everything was so green; could be so beautiful, untouched by destruction, war, suffering. And now that he had helped the universe regain its balance, the time had come. He groaned deep down in his throat at the thought; it was the last, but necessary obstacle. The gauntlet lay safe in the darkest corner of the house; there was no excuse for postponing it any further. He had pondered this long enough. He had feared this since day one of his plan, and never mentioned it to anyone, not even his daughters or the Maw. It would have been too risky. After all, his ultimate goal had never been to rule, or to have power. All he had wanted was to bestow benevolence upon the world. He had begun it and now he was to finish it. Eyes half unseeing from the brightness outside, he turned back towards the house. With heavy, but determined steps he strode through the twilit room. In the very back, almost untouched by the light except for a few rays falling through the beams, sparkled the gauntlet. He reverently picked it up and turned it gently in his hands to admire the rainbow beauty of the stones one last time. But then he saw it and stopped short; the Space Stone was gone, its blue sparkle lacking, the rainbow imperfect. The air was suddenly sharp in his nose, his jaw clenched tight, in synch with his fingers closing around the gauntlet. How?! How was this possible? No one knew he was here; no one else was here; he had left Earth alone, with the gauntlet complete. A terrible, unprecedented anger swelled within his chest, making his blood boil, drumming in his ears, and he let it out in a screaming, thundering roar that shook the very planet’s earth and sky.

Aching. The first thing there was, every morning. Like each cell in his body was deprived of its core. An existential lack. A greyish streak of light fell on Steve’s face, accompanied by the slow steady scratch of the record player’s needle. The sun was barely up yet. On the pillow next to his head lay a sketchbook full of crossed-out attempts at missing faces. But it seemed as though any such possibility of representation or memory had left the world with them, at least for Steve. He had never been one to sleep in or through several alarms, or even stay in bed for a minute after he woke up, but that, too, had changed. Never before had he felt like he did right now. The only thing coming somewhat close to it was after Bucky had fallen; but back then there had been a war to be won. There had been no time for despair. He listened to the soft crackling of the spinning record, staring out of the window as a slight dawn drizzle set in outside. His hand closed around something on his neck; there had never been room for army dog tags under his suit, so he had worn a hollow bullet in his utility belt, containing his identificatory data. Now he had it on a bead chain on his neck – since the day they had gone. The titanium was cold and unforgiving on his skin as he pressed it ever deeper into his palm, betraying nothing of its fragile content.

Tony was already in the kitchen. He looked like half a ghost himself, after almost two weeks in space with barely any food or water. He had only returned three days ago, together with that blue silent girl Nebula and a blazing half-alien who seemed to have powers that were beyond any of them and who, fittingly, had left them behind in their misery again almost as soon as she had come and explained herself as an old acquaintance of Fury’s. Said she, together with her Pegasus-riding Asgardian companion and her two weird space-creatures – who were the only ones to bring a brief smile onto Thor’s face – had many more grieving peoples on many more half-dead planets to tend to, and find out Thanos’ whereabouts as they went. With Tony, a different form of grief had come. It was still mingled with resentment and coldness, and since losing Peter up in space, Tony had closed up even more. The only one he seemed to properly talk to was Pepper. Steve and he hadn’t exchanged any words beyond necessary information. Now he was sitting there at the kitchen table, sipping black coffee at five in the morning, barely taking notice of Steve at all except for one glare brushing across Steve’s hand clutching the bullet underneath his shirt. By no means in the world could he know…but still Steve felt as if he did. He pulled the shirt’s front away from his body and walked out of the kitchen. There was something about the helplessness of this situation that made it feel at times as though they were all taking each other’s air to breathe. He sat down on the bench beside the lake and stared out onto the water.

About three hours later, Nat had gathered them all around the kitchen table for something that was supposed to resemble a breakfast together. They were almost too many to fit around the table. Nevertheless, the silence about them seemed unbreakable. Even Nat, who had tried to keep everyone’s spirits up as much as she could ever since it had happened and had gained a little support when Clint and Scott with their daughters had arrived, was talking increasingly hushed. Bruce sat hunched over his bowl of cereal, barely eating, avoiding everyone’s gaze and only coming to table because it was Nat who asked him; Rhodey seemed to try to mediate between Tony’s silence and Nat, Clint and Scott’s efforts to at least think of _something_ to do, along with Pepper, and Rocket seemed to eat all the feelings that Nebula didn’t show. Pepper sometimes threw him a smile because at least someone ate her pancakes. Steve had one on his plate right now, but it seemed to cancel whatever hunger he might have had. He poked around in a blueberry inside the pancake and drew a little purple star on the white plate. Thor next to him glanced at him and his pained, wrathful expression loosened up for the wink of an eye as he gave him a tiny nod. But Steve only looked down, pushed his plate over and stood up to make for the bathroom. Not even in his own reflection he was safe from memories. He stroked over his beard, flinched at its odd softness and proceeded to whiten it in shaving foam. Minutes later – his face was all smooth again and he was just cleaning up his sideburns – something suddenly gave a shuddering thud and his hand slipped, leaving a tiny red cut in his cheek. He washed it off angrily and made for the kitchen. But no one was there anymore. He ran downstairs led by some instinct and found the main door open. He stormed outside, and there they were all standing, and on the lawn beside the driveway there stood a huge, metallic-glinting rock that had dug its way deep into the earth, as though fallen from a great height. He flashed Nat a “what the heck?!” look, but she shrugged and shook her head, never really taking her eyes from the strange intrusive object. And right then it happened. A circular black hole appeared atop the boulder, from which a silvery-golden glint began to spread that quickly became too bright to look at. Then suddenly it went out – and there on the stone stood Loki brother of Thor, his entire body glowing golden, his horn helmet starburst-reflecting the morning sun, his cloak floating while he gazed down at them, proudly and with the hint of a smile, and the Tesseract gleaming in his right hand, and his voice rung above the silence:

“Your saviour is here!” 

There was perfect silence for an instant, then the portal behind Loki closed with a sparking hiss and he proceeded to descend from the stone. This was when his rigour released Thor and he stormed towards Loki and flung his huge arms around him and buried his face in his brother’s glossy, black hair. It took him a long time before he could either let go or speak. “Brother”, Loki let out a mischievous giggle, “you do seem as though you were in desperate need of leadership…”

Thor slapped his hand on Loki’s shoulder and muttered, gently shaking his head: “You have no idea…” Then finally he looked up and in Loki’s eyes. “Brother. Forgive me. For all I said…did… I will not lose you ever again. I promise.”

Loki chuckled. “No need to be so dark, brother. I told you the sun will shine on us again. Did you really think I, the God of Mischief, would try to stab a _titan_ with a knife?! He’s not _you_ , Thor…” Thor smiled softly at Loki’s nagging. Then his eyes suddenly narrowed. “But…how…” His eyes wandered to the Tesseract that was still in Loki’s hand. Loki however wouldn’t stop grinning.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?!”

“Yes, I most definitely would”, Tony suddenly launched in as he stepped up on Thor’s right. “And you come inside with us right now and tell us. Or it’ll be New York all over again. We still have a Hulk.”

“I know”, smiled Loki and turned towards the rest of the group. “Hey everyone. Hi Bruce!” Bruce looked as if he was about to scream.

A few minutes later, they were all gathered around the assembly table. They had hardly sat down when Tony, suddenly some inches taller and poised, propped his fist on the table opposite Loki and asked: “So first of all, Professor Snape, why did you destroy the front lawn and what the _hell_ is that damn thing?”

“It’s a meteor, Tony”, Loki retorted, as though a meteor in the front lawn was the most normal thing in the world. “Besides, I wasn’t expecting to see you alive ever again, after what happened up there…”

All sound in the room suddenly seemed sucked out and everyone stared at Loki. Thor found his words again first.

“Loki – what do you mean, _up there_?”

“Titan”, Loki replied completely unimpressed, looking Tony square in the eye.

“Wait, hold up everyone”, Tony snapped, pushing himself up from the table and let his eyes wander once around the group.

“Did I – did he just say Titan? Did you actually just say Titan?! I…” He gave an exasperated huff before starting to laugh and shake his head sarcastically.

Steve furrowed his brow. “You were _there_? _How_?”

Loki slowly rose from his chair, flicked his hair back, reached under his cloak and held up the Tesseract. “This”, he grinned, drawing out the ‘s’ into a hiss. Then he fixed his eyes on Thor. “You remember when Thanos throttled me? Well…that wasn’t me. I was”, he turned the Tesseract in his slender fingers, “this beautiful cube at that point. Snakes don’t do it for everyone, right, brother?” He giggled. “Well, however, after that, Thanos literally took me wherever he went – right in his gauntlet.” He cocked his head proudly at Thor, who looked overwhelmed. Very much unlike Tony, who now rose as well and said quietly, not taking his eyes off of Loki:

“Are you telling me you watched all that happen, up there and down here, watched everyone struggle and fight and die and did _nothing_?!” A bitter chuckle broke his voice and he swallowed heavily, visibly fighting tears. “I…I mean of course you did.” His voice became thin and he sat down again, clutching Pepper’s hand on the table. Everyone was so focused on Tony right now, they hadn’t noticed how Loki’s mimics had changed, except for Thor.

“Hey”, he muttered lowly, “what is it, Loki?” All eyes turned back on the pale god. All of a sudden, his face was a display of sincere, plain remorse and grief.

“Yeah…of course I was, Tony. That’s why I tried everything to impair Thanos’ powers, and those of the stones. That’s why I…” Loki’s voice broke and the sheen that had been about him the entire time vanished, revealing, beyond the illusion, what looked almost like an entirely different man; Loki was emaciated, his cheeks sunk in, his eyes bloodshot and framed by dark grey shadows, his face covered in gashes, his hands and arms blackish blue up to his shoulders, and more wounds strewn across the entirety of his barely clad body, covered only by the ripped remainders of a shirt and some straps of his armour.

“That’s why I tried to absorb all the power of the Tesseract into my body when he snapped…so it wouldn’t work.” He sank back down onto his chair and gazed through the glass table at the floor underneath. Everyone was silent. Everyone except…

“Well, sadly _that_ didn’t work. Thanks for playing, though”, remarked Tony.

“Tony!” Steve shot at him, while Thor’s glance hit him with the power of Stormbreaker and a little electric flicker in his eyes.

“I think actually it did”, Loki murmured, more to himself than to anyone else at this point. Then he blinked, looking up and smiling sadly at Thor. “When it happened, I could inhibit the process enough to…avoid everyone’s death, actually.”

“But where are they then?” Nat asked.

“They’re elsewhere. In a different dimension of sorts. They’re…inside the Soul Stone.” Nebula looked alarmed. “What about Gamora?”

“Thanos killed her on Vormir, sacrificed her for the Soul Stone. So she’s in there, too. The stone keeps its victims. Until it is destroyed.”

“So that’s…that’s it?! We have to destroy the Soul Stone?” asked Thor, almost reverently.

“I guess so”, Tony said. “Except the gauntlet is still with Thanos. And we have no idea where that sackhead is.”

He didn’t look up from where his hands were interlaced with Pepper’s.

“Hey Loki”, he muttered then, suddenly with a sharp, restrained anger in his voice, “how about showing up _earlier_ if your goal was to save the day all along? Before we actually lost? Huh? Wouldn’t that _maybe_ have been a way towards redemption better than this shady one?!”

This time it was Thor who muttered a low “Tony!” towards him, but Tony was only just getting worked up. He let go of Pepper’s hand, stood up again, leaned over the table in Loki’s direction and said: “How do we know you’re not actually using _that_ as your illusion, and in fact you’re completely fine? How do we even know that Thanos didn’t send you? I really don’t know why I’m suddenly supposed to believe you’re on our side. All you ever did was cause chaos, suffering and death! And suddenly you come barging in here on a goddamn _meteor_ and want to play our saviour?! Well, maybe you didn’t notice, but we _lost_ , grease man. We lost all that we loved. Friends. Family. Home.”

He paused and breathed heavily. Steve swallowed, his hand grazing the bullet underneath his grey shirt. Home. Thor’s scruff bass pulled him out of his thought.

“Yes, Tony. But so did we. Both of us. A lot has changed since New York. Look around you, none of us is the same.”

Cassie on Scott’s lap leaned in towards her father and whispered something in his ear, and he whispered back with a smile.

“We all fought our own wars in between. We were all hurt, and we all changed. Loki is no exception. None of us should judge people by their mistakes. Especially when they weren’t their own fault.” He laid an arm around Loki.

Tony looked at Steve, whose lips were one straight, tight line, trying hard to bite back tears. They were all unstable at the moment, raw like an open wound.

“He’s right, Tony”, Nat spoke up. “We all wouldn’t be here were it not for second, third, fourth chances. Please remember that.”

“Fine”, Tony retorted, “but why don’t we let him say something for himself? I want to _hear_ from himself why he didn’t decide to help us when there was still a chance that we might win.” He fell back into his chair and crossed his arms behind his head expectantly. “Go ahead.” All eyes turned back on Loki.

“Well, first of all, there was just no opportunity. You are aware that I must get away without Thanos noticing, otherwise, if he had only suspected something, Thanos would have used the other stones to uncover my illusion, and it would all have been in vain. But there was not a moment when he would let the gauntlet out of sight. Not before he actually accomplished his goal.”

“What about Titan?” Nebula interjected. “We almost had the gauntlet there. We could have used a hand.”

“Says _who_ ”, Loki hissed. “You did _nothing_. And it was a hopeless fight from the start. That _magician_ , as you call him – that terribly terran abuser of the laws of your physics – why didn’t he use his portals for something useful just once, like chopping off the arm instead of having you try to pull the gauntlet off Thanos? He…”

“He said there was only one way we could win. One chance in millions!” Tony shouted, so wrathful all of a sudden that even Pepper threw him a frightened look.

“Maybe then this is this one chance, this one possible reality, don’t you think? If he said so, he must’ve known.” Loki was serious again.

“And when was your chance to get away, then?” asked Nat, who still seemed the most collected of them all.

“When Thanos decided to rest.” Loki looked at her intently. “On a planet not dissimilar to Earth. Only, he is alone there.”

“You’re telling me that nutsack of a face is up there on a lonely planet enjoying his retirement?!” Rocket laughed sarcastically. “Why am I not even surprised right now?” He put his paw in Nebula’s hand.

“So what are we gonna do?” asked Lila, perched on Clint’s knee. A smile rushed across Clint’s face.

“Well, it seems”, Nat replied, “that we are going up there.”

“No.”

Silence. Tony looked around. “No, we’re not.”

Everyone stared at him.

“What?” Thor gasped, between incredulity and annoyance. “Tony, we have this one chance. He’s _alone_!”

“He was alone the last time we faced him, and we were twice as many. We can’t win this fight. But we can’t lose it either. We can’t lose even more. I can’t.”

Rhodey laid his hand on his old friend’s shoulder. “Actually, I agree. It’s irresponsible. We have to wait, at least, for the glowing space girl and her troop to return.”

“Carol said she won’t be back in weeks. Thanos is there _now_ ”, Nat emphasized.

“He’s retired”, Bruce replied. “He won’t be going anywhere anytime soon.”

“We don’t know that”, Thor said. “Maybe he just needs some rest. Maybe he’ll notice that the stone is gone. As long as he’s alive, this isn’t over.”

“Maybe for you it’s not”, muttered Tony. “But it is for me, at least until we get a real chance. I’m not going up there again any time soon.”

“Tony, you don’t have to come”, Steve said quietly. “You’ve done enough.”

“Don’t you dare tell me anything about what I have or don’t have to do, Cap. And don’t believe I’ll trust you with anything ever again. You get _nothing_ , Rogers, no trust. You’re a traitor. A liar. And you can’t solve all problems just by going under for a while. You and I, we’re not done yet”, Tony hissed quietly, clenching his jaw and staring Steve in the eye. The latter dropped his head on his chest.

“This isn’t about you and I, Tony”, he mumbled. “This is about the universe.”

“I can almost tell how long you’ve wanted to say that sentence”, Tony retorted.

Steve remained silent; he didn’t want to keep this up. He wanted to make peace. But to Tony he seemed to be at this point what he had been to Ultron; the man who couldn’t live without a war.

“If it hadn’t been for Thanos, you’d still be a searched-for criminal, Cap. So shut up and be glad you’re not in shackles.”

A cold, hostile silence fell over the table.

Suddenly Scott blurted out: “Um, guys…all respect for the superhero vibe and all, but…I really gotta go pee. Morning coffee’s through. Anyone else?”

“Thanks for speaking my mind, man”, replied Rocket and hopped off his chair. “I have no idea what they’re going on about and my bladder gets loud when I’m bored.”

Suddenly half the table seemed to be leaving. By the end of a good two minutes of bustle, only Tony, Bruce, Steve, Nat, Thor, Clint and Loki were left. Steve gazed at all of them one after the other and remembered 2012 when they had first come together; no one would ever even have imagined that Loki might one day be sitting _with_ them. Really a lot had changed. For some seconds he closed his eyes and let his memories of the past seven years flicker across his mind like film. But they always got hung up on the same face. He didn’t realize he’d started crying once he reopened his eyes. Suddenly it all made him angry.

“Tony”, he muttered, “if you’re not with us on this, we’ll do it alone. Or if no one’s with me – _I’ll_ do it alone. I don’t care anymore. Ultron said I can’t be without war. And he was right – Captain America was born of war, for war. But I, Steve – I can be without war, and only then. And I have fought enough. It’s all led up to this. This is the last stand – but we have to take it.” He wiped the tears off his cheeks.

Nat put a hand on his shoulder. “He’s right. We owe this to everyone we lost. We can save them still. We need to get up there and destroy the Soul Stone. And then all the rest with it.” At this point Loki flinched visibly in his chair.

“What’s up with you, sleeky?” Clint asked with a side glance.

“You can’t…you can’t destroy all the stones”, Loki gasped. “You can’t mean that!”

“Actually yes we do”, hissed Tony. “No matter what. They’re too big a risk to keep.”

Loki leaped up. “But they could solve all of our problems!”

“But what are _our_ problems? No one can wield them in service of the entire universe. No one should possess that power”, Nat said factually.

Loki threw his arms up and covered his face. “You morons”, he whispered through his fingers. “You have the chance to set an end to all this and you would actively _destroy_ it. Naturally. You’re humans. I really should’ve known.”

A flicker went all through him and he was back in his armour, cloak and horned helmet. He was about to produce the Tesseract when Thor threw himself against him and yelled: “Brother, no! Not again!” And then, quietly and in a broken voice: “Don’t go. Not without me.”

No one had noticed that at this moment, Tony had unlocked his nanotech jet blaster glove. Within seconds, he aimed at the two of them, shot them down, shouted: “Friday, _now_!” and had them in a sort of full-body cage each that bent them over backwards and didn’t allow them any movement or speech, due to metal muzzles. In the shock of the moment, the Tesseract had slipped from Loki’s hands and rolled under the table. Tony picked it up. “I knew we couldn’t trust you. Only this time, I actually came prepared. Take them to the cells, Friday.”

Four unmanned Mark suits came flying, picked up the stunned gods and half flew, half dragged them out of the room.

Steve didn’t say a word to anyone after this. In utter silence he returned to his room and lay down on the floor beside the bed, on the far side of the door, facing the window front. He opened the drawer in his bedside table, pulled out the old compass and looked at Peggy smiling at him from an unreachable place in time. He was so glad she’d had a happy, full life all along. That she never got to live to see these times. And that she had helped him to let go of what could not be held onto. He closed it again and pushed it into the far back of the drawer. Instead he pulled out a folder, opened it and looked at the first picture, which was about as old as that of Peggy, but had no aged or dead face to it in his mind. Only pain, so much undeserved, unavenged and as of yet unfinished pain. How he wished he could see that face again without this pain – but that was almost as hopeless as seeing Peggy’s once more in the flesh. Still he wanted it, more than anything else in the world, and would do anything for it, again and again and again. As Bucky had done for him. A vacuum of guilt blew up inside his ribcage, pressing on his heart, and he coughed and cried and rolled up on the carpeted, soft floor half below the bed with the bullet pressed tight to his chest.

Nat sat with Clint, Lila, Scott and Cassie in the kitchen, all of them grim. She, unlike the others, had not lost anyone as close to her but was instead just about to lose them – again. Any next step could be wrong, could mean their final demise, but except for that there was nothing more to lose, and she was willing to give everything for those she loved to be made whole again. Clint, Lila, Scott and Cassie all put on brave faces, but Nat knew that in terms of what they had at stake they were all far softer than they would admit. Her family were the Avengers, and she hated and feared to see them as divided by hate and fear as they were right now, once again – but she was fighting _not to lose_ and not, like the others, to regain. She was more collected than any of the others, still focused, although right now the situation seemed hopeless and all they seemed to be able to do was wait. Anything else would drive them apart so far it might never be healed, and she of all of them did not want to risk that. With all else they had already lost, they couldn’t afford falling apart entirely. It was bad enough to have both their godly possible allies in the cells in the basement instead of in their middle, working out how to save the Dusted and kill Thanos. She wished she actually had a way to contact Carol. With her help, they might at least be able to convince Tony of taking a last stand against Thanos. But they could not fight three battles, two of them within their own ranks. Something about Loki had definitely changed throughout the years, although obviously not enough to make him an ally. But enough about Thor had changed to make him a rebel. Something had tied him and Loki closer together; as he had said, they had both lost everything except one another. In a way, how different was this from when Clint had been sent to kill her?

Bruce was in his room, alone, as so often these days. Unlike the others seemed to have, he hadn’t believed this would change anything from the start. He was completely devoid of all feeling. He had tried so hard to be angry for so long, but there was always too much fear; deep, existential fear. He hated himself like never before for not being able to put the fight for his friends before his own fear, but it wasn’t that simple. If the Hulk did come back

indeed, it might happen that Bruce would not. It had been close the last time. But he didn’t want to hurt anyone anymore, didn’t want to destroy, barely know how to tell friend from foe, and lose all intelligent thought. He wanted to be human, even if that meant to be afraid and vulnerable and weak. Even if the Hulk returned to fight for his friends – they were Bruce’s friends, not the Hulk’s. So if he couldn’t fight for them as Bruce, he might never see them again either way. They would live. But without him. And fearing that idea was so selfish. He shouldn’t care. The Hulk wouldn’t, but Bruce did, enough to not be angry at all. In fact, at other times, he would have felt unspeakably grateful for the silence that was within him. But in some way he always ended up his own enemy in one way or the other.

Tony stared blankly at the wall. Was he selfish? Compared with Clint or Scott, was he lucky? Pepper was alive, or else he would no longer be here already now. Rhodey was alive, and so was Happy. But Peter wasn’t. Had slipped from him right there in his arms, and he saw the terror in the boy’s eyes every time he closed his own. He saw nothing else at night. Half the world was dead. Half the universe. Still he was afraid of losing even more. There was more to lose – at least for him, and he couldn’t risk that, no matter what the chances. He felt so tired and weak, he could barely keep his eyes open. And then Loki. As if two opponents – Thanos and his own conscience – weren’t enough. Steve didn’t count. Sometimes, Steve was like that darkest corner of his mind’s voice. A lot of the things he said were right, Tony knew that. But he hadn’t forgiven him. His frozen friend may have been brainwashed, but he had still killed Tony’s parents, and Steve hadn’t even as much as said sorry or distanced himself. Once Barnes had shown up, everything and everyone else seemed to have been forgotten. And now Thor stepped in his footsteps and stuck with his evil brother no matter what. Tony wondered what he would do. But what had he done – back then? He hadn’t reconciled his old warmongering, indifferent self – he had defeated it. Eliminated it for good. Become its opposite.

Pepper came in, threw one look at him and wrapped him in her arms.

Loki and Thor knelt side by side in the high security cell in the basement. Their muzzles had been removed so they could breathe properly, but otherwise they were still caged in their immobilizing metal skeletons, held upright by them without their own volition, apart from their hanging heads. For a long time, they were both silent.

“What made you do this?” Loki asked at last.

“I know you are changed, Loki”, Thor replied. “And so am I. I have never regretted anything in my life as much as that day up in the spaceship, and I would do anything to make up for it, to undo my failure, both towards you and towards the universe, and I know that both is possible, together. Because of me, you died and then half the universe died and the other half is slowly dying in mourning. I am supposed to be the Protector of the Nine Realms. I have to earn that name. And knowing you would have died for this that day…I simply can’t believe you are still unchanged.”

“You’re right, brother”, Loki muttered. “Far from unchanged indeed. Maybe we’re both getting…old and soft, Thor.”

Thor chuckled and some joints in the cage gave a squeaky, tight rattle.

“I found out something in the days I ruled over Asgard as Odin”, said Loki. “It is not so much the ruling aspect that I enjoy as it is the knowledge that the wellbeing of the people is in my hands. That it is within my power to protect them, provide for them, and be… _loved_ by them.” And after a moment he added: “I am so tired of being feared; hated.”

Thor smiled gently deep down in his full beard. “Brother”, he muttered, his voice cracked and he swallowed down the lump in his throat. When he finally looked up at Loki, he pressed his lips together tightly but still couldn’t avoid shedding a tear. “I knew it.”

“I want it again, Thor. I want to rule again, and be loved by my people. Put on…plays for them, make them smile at silly mischief instead of making them weep. I want…I want to save the Earth, Thor. I want to stay here. Maybe help the Asgardians that remain, as of now. But I had a look at Earth and…the thing is, it needs a saviour. Humans are so gullible, so naïve. They need a leader that doesn’t push them down the path of their own extinction. But their planet is on the verge of collapse. In that aspect, Thanos was right.”

Thor looked shocked. “Loki, but…”

“That doesn’t mean I agree with him, however. I think it can be saved without killing anyone. Thanos is a blinded fanatic, and he made me one too, once, in my blind thirst for power. But that is long, long ago. No, I don’t want to destroy the stones. Because I want to use them to help save this planet. For its people.”

Thor’s features had relaxed again, but he still looked slightly unsettled. “And what are you planning on doing?”

“I need to find out more about how their planet works. Their systems and societies. But maybe I could…create more resources, or something similar to that.”

“Using the stones?”

“Yes.”

“But Loki…don’t you think that ultimately, they need to learn how to deal with their problems alone?”

“I do. But…ages ago, they believed in us down there. In our father. Our stories and myths. They venerated us. And then Father left them to their own devices, and turned towards conquest and war. And I was thinking…maybe it was too early. Maybe they weren’t ready yet. You wouldn’t leave a band of young wolves alone in the wild, or some…wobbly-legged foals. They need to be tended to until they can tend to themselves. Abandon them too early and they perish. Father left the humans too early. They need salvation.” He looked up at Thor with wide, sincere eyes. “And to make a beginning, I need the stones.” 

All of a sudden, the entire complex was shaken by a thunderous tremor. Seconds later they all came running from every corner of the building. Except for Thor and Loki. They knelt, immobile, in their cell, holding their breaths, trying to figure out by sound what was happening above. But no more sound came.

The meteor on the front lawn was gone. So was the front lawn. Instead there was a gigantic crater, and some of the front windowpanes had been shattered by the impact. The crater itself was yawning empty. But there was a deafening whirring in the air above them, making the air shake hotly, and at about the height of the top floor of the compound, there was a huge black spacecraft hovering. Almost as soon as they had all stepped out and were staring at the devastation, a buzzing ray of bluish-white light was projected down from the spacecraft to the bottom of the crater, and seconds later Thanos stood before them, in full, golden armour, the gauntlet on his left hand.

“Earthlings!” he roared. “You dare still stand against me!” He stepped up the crater slowly until he towered above them all. Then he leaned down and said in a whisper that was like a storm about to break loose: “Who of you possesses the insolence of taking the Space Stone from me? Hand it over to me now, and I will spare the rest of your wretched kind. Withhold it, and I will wipe you out, until the last drop of blood, the last flake of ash is washed from this planet.”

“Seriously, who of you thought it was a good idea walking out here without your suits on?” muttered Rocket, his face contorted in anger, but with tears pooling in his eyes. He cocked his machine gun and looked at Nebula. “Ready when you are.”

“ _Tell me. Now!_ ” Thanos was already about to raise his enormous two-bladed sword. Tony hit his arc reactor and within seconds, the nanotech suit spread over his body, covering it in glittering red and gold. “Go get your asses battle-ready”, he whispered. Then he blew his jet blasters and shot up into the air right in front of Thanos’ face before hitting him hard with a shockwave. Rhodey’s and Pepper’s suits came speeding at them from the building, enclosing them in no time, ready to help the others out. And while they confounded Thanos with a mutual blast, the others ran back to inside to get into their respective gear. Steve slipped into his Wakandan suit and strapped on the single-arm shields.

“Bruce”, Happy shouted. “Get back outside. I’m going to launch the Hulkbuster.”

But Bruce just stared blankly at him.

“No”, he panted, chest heaving, and looked bewilderedly at the others gearing up around him.

“Alright”, muttered Happy. “Then I’ll do it myself.” And he ran upstairs.

Clint and Scott were briefing the girls while simultaneously getting into their suits and readying their weapons.

“No buts; you head down into the basement and stay there until this is over”, Scott instructed them. “Off you go.” His voice was firm, but the fear was written in his eyes. “Alright guys, let’s get going”, shouted Nat, drawing her taser staffs and charging outside. Tony suddenly came in on intercom. “We need to get the gauntlet. We have no chance against him as long as he has it.”

“Distract him, Tony”, Steve replied. “I’ll try and get through to him.”

But as soon as any of them tried to directly attack Thanos, he would use one of the stones to thwart their attempt.

“Tell me where the stone is!” he thundered while looping Rocket a few seconds back in time.

Meanwhile, Cassie and Lila were on their way to the basement, and Bruce sat on a chair as though forgotten by all, breathing flatly and his eyes bespeaking blank horror. Outside the window, explosions were happening as though in slow-motion, flames flared up, and the building shook once more when the Hulkbuster suit landed on the edge of the crater, remote-controlled by Happy standing at the window of the top floor – and all Bruce could do was watch. He was completely unable to move or actively perceive. He could almost see himself as though he was outside his own body, noncorporeal, disconnected and entirely helpless.

Cassie and Lila had arrived in the basement and came stumbling downstairs right towards Loki and Thor’s cell. Thor suddenly burst out smiling.

“Hey!” he grinned. “What’s going on up there?”

“It’s Thanos”, Lila said. “He’s attacking the building. He wants the stone.”

“I knew this would happen”, Thor mumbled, smile vanishing into bitterness and gloom. “And we’re down here, unable to help.”

Loki dropped his head. “This is my fault. I should have killed him when I had the chance – even just the fraction of a chance.”

“Cheer up”, Cassie said with a cheeky smile. “It’s your lucky day, Loki.”

And she pulled a bright pink hair pin out from underneath her long brown strands.

“Cassie, that’s a high-security cell”, Lila told her. “You can’t breach it with a _hair pin_.”

“This isn’t just any hair pin”, Cassie replied with determination while already proceeding to insert it into the cell’s lock. “This is a present from my dad. It’s a _special_ hair pin.”

And the lock clicked. Delight flared up in Thor’s bright blue eyes.

“Yes!” he shouted. But Cassie didn’t even stop to triumph, she immediately went on to pick on the claw-like lock of the skeleton cage. Nothing happened, and both Lila and Thor’s expressions dropped again. Thor sighed disappointedly.

“Its’s alright”, he murmured. “They’ll get by.”

Right then, the ribs of the cage snapped open one by one, releasing Thor so suddenly he fell flat on his face. Barely paying him any notice, Cassie went to work on Loki’s cage as well, only to stop and smile broadly when Loki fell out of the metal ribs.

“Now go on, save the earth.” Thor dropped back down on his knees, hugged them both at once while Loki gave them a deeply grateful smile and nod, then laid his arm around his brother and made them both disappear. Lila and Cassie looked at each other.

“Wow”, said Lila. “You’re amazing, tater tot. And you gave me an idea. Follow me upstairs.”

Upstairs, Thor and Loki landed in the foyer and their eyes fell right on Bruce.

“Bruce!” Thor shouted. “What are you doing in here?”

Somehow, this released Bruce from his rigour.

“I…I”, he stuttered.

But Thor didn’t need an answer; he saw. His sunshine smile dropped as he walked towards his old friend, followed by Loki. “You’re still afraid, aren’t you?”

Ignoring all that was happening behind his back, outside the window, Thor sat down next to Bruce and laid an arm around him. “I understand. You fear that you might not be able to become yourself again.” He sighed. “But look – you once defeated both of us.”

Loki nodded, keeping his distance, the memory still all too present even after seven years. “And both times, you came back. You became Bruce again. The Hulk helped you in situations you might not have survived otherwise in the first place. He kept you alive in space. On Sakaar. He protects you when you fall. He is not your enemy, Bruce.”

He looked warmly at him. “He is your shield, your weapon. Just like I have Stormbreaker, Cap has his shield and Tony has his suit, you have the Hulk. You can, you _should_ be proud of that, because if you weren’t _meant_ to be the Hulk, you would never have survived becoming him in the first place.”

Finally Bruce turned to him and even returned his smile, even if it still seemed a little broken. “Thor”, he said quietly. “Thank you.” And he hugged him.

Thor, although slightly taken aback, hugged back.

“But I don’t think I should be angry anymore.”

Thor let go. “Bruce”, he said quietly, “you are _allowed_ to be angry. We all are. We all lost more than we ever thought we would, and it hurts, and it makes me angry, and Loki, and all of us. This is not like before. You can’t do anything wrong here; there is either win or lose, life or death. Nothing will happen to you, I promise. You can allow yourself to be just as angry as the rest of us. As angry as you really are.”

Something in Bruce’s face changed. “You won’t let me do anything stupid?” he asked.

Thor shook his head. “I won’t.”

Bruce rose from his chair. “Alright. Get that axe ready.”

And he pulled his shirt over his head while Thor stretched out his arm and they heard the splinter of glass. With a swoop, the massive axe came to land in Thor’s hand, while at the same time he suddenly had his armour on, and before they could blink, Bruce towered up beside them, brawny and green as ever, and said in a low voice: “Let’s go smash.”

As soon as they stepped out the door, chaos engulfed them. Thanos was no longer fighting alone, but had released a troop of Outriders on the Avengers and was now practically unreachable. Steve was restricted to close combat with his clawed single-arm shields, as were Nat and Nebula. The Hulkbuster and Scott as Giant-Man had teamed up and were mowing down the Outriders like blades of grass, but Thanos seemed to have a sheer never-ending supply of them. Tony, Rhodey and Pepper tried their best over and over again to actually attack Thanos, but even with five of the Infinity Stones, he had five different ways of countering whatever attack without even physically touching them. Rocket and Clint were shooting Outriders by the dozens, but it all seemed to no avail.

Thor thrust Stormbreaker towards the sky, summoning lightning and thunder until every cell of his body was tingling with electricity. Suddenly, from the compound speakers mounted on the outside of the building, Led Zeppelin’s “Immigrant Song” blared over the battle noise. On the top floor, Happy, Cassie and Lila did a triple high five.

A wide smile appeared on Thor’s face, which became even wider when the Hulk’s roar rose up to the ash- and smoke-filled sky, and turned into a toothy grin when the battle seemed to come to a halt for a moment and _everyone_ turned around towards them.

“Brother”, Loki murmured, “it’s time to avenge the fallen.”

And with that, he multiplied himself and, undistinguishable from his illusions, rose up together with the host of them to hover above Thanos. And the omnipresent held breath collapsed and the forces clashed. The Hulk made a jump at the spaceship and tore a piece out of it that came crashing down on the battlefield.

“Cover!” Tony screamed over intercom while blasting the falling debris into smaller pieces. Nat had to fend one off with her taser staff, while Giant-Man was already about to launch the Hulk into the sky for a second time, simultaneously trying to still stomp on as many Outriders as possible.

Right then, Thor suddenly smashed Stormbreaker onto the ground. Veins of lightning shot through the trampled earth and into the body of every Outrider in the vicinity. They all dropped dead at once. Before new ones could enclose them, everyone stormed towards Thanos, who was back on his own for the moment. But that didn’t mean he was vulnerable, or even reachable.

“I don’t need them”, he shouted, almost calmly, while wielding the sword in his right and the gauntlet in his left hand. With an enormous wave of power, he threw back Tony, Pepper, Rhodey and Steve, who crashed into a heap of rubble several dozen yards away. Next, he stripped away Loki’s illusions that had been closing in on his head with a single red wave, striking out against Nat, Nebula and Rocket at the same time, hitting Nebula hard as she threw herself to protect the other two. Clint’s explosive arrow, as well as Giant-Man and the Hulk, were spun back in time in a green ring, until the Hulk was falling again, along with the pieces of damaged space ship, and this time they crashed down hard, and while Thor managed to propel a huge metal shard towards Thanos with his axe, there was a sharp clang when another piece hit the Hulkbuster and split off his left arm. Tony was already back up in the air, using the moment when Thanos was fending off the metal shard to attack back, blasting away at him, while Thor tossed Stormbreaker. But Thanos lifted his gigantic blade right in time, knocked back Stormbreaker and struck Tony. The blade cut through the suit like a sheet of paper. For a horrible second, Tony’s tiny body stuck mid-air on Thanos’ double-bladed sword, which bored right through his left side. Pepper screamed. Thanos threw Tony off, blasted a purple power-wave after him and Stormbreaker, which threw Thor to the ground when he tried to grab it, and then Thanos stepped onto him and held him down with the sword across Thor’s throat. Thor desperately tried to summon Stormbreaker back into his hand, but it didn’t come. Yards away, it stuck hilt-deep in a remnant block of meteor. A new surge of Outriders finally arrived and washed over them, making it impossible once more for anyone to come near Thanos while he was choking Thor. Suddenly, Stormbreaker began to move. On a cliff slightly above there stood Steve, all alone, right arm raised – and with a quiver, the axe came to rest in his hand. Lightning and thunder ensued. He smote the axe on the ground, slaying dozens of outriders at once, and also sending a shock of electricity through Thanos’ blade, which allowed Thor to at last slip away. He saw Steve with Stormbreaker, roared a cheerful “Yes! I knew it!” and summoned a thunderstorm in his bare hands, thrashing it against Thanos with its entire power. Meanwhile, Steve ran towards him, Stormbreaker still raised high in his right, lightning streaking behind him, and threw himself into the thunderstorm around the titan. For an instant, he couldn’t see anything for the sheer brightness, but then there was Thanos, his face in obvious pain as the electricity coursed through him, and Steve slammed the axe down against his wrist. But right then, the titan was able to burst out of the thunderstorm, and he struck Steve down, smashing the entire force of his sword against Steve’s left arm-shield, shattering the arm beneath, while at the same moment Stormbreaker cut deep into Thanos’ wrist, hewing his hand and the gauntlet half off. Thanos screamed, while Steve bit down the numbing pain and wrestled the hand in the gauntlet entirely down to the ground, throwing himself onto it with all his might, and then shouting in the intercom, to whoever might be copying: “Now!” Already, everything went white before his eyes. But Thor and Nebula, as the first ones, came to his rescue. And while Nebula rammed two knives into Thanos’ arm and then threw herself against it to help keep it down, Thor picked Stormbreaker back up and hacked through the rest of the titan’s arm. Thanos broke down in an agonized scream, writhing with pain, while Nebula and Thor pulled the gauntlet off the severed hand. Then, as Thor was about to let out a cry of almost-victory, he looked up and around himself and for a moment it was as though time was standing still; Steve was lying close to Thanos’ feet, his left arm under the shattered shield contorted in an unnatural fashion, his face covered in gashes and dirt, blood running from the corner of his slack mouth, motionless; Clint and Rocket were close by, still holding out against Thanos’ forces; the Hulkbuster was no more than a heap of metal, crushed by countless fangs and claws; the Hulk and Giant-Man were struggling against at least a dozen Outriders each, clambering up their legs, slowly tearing them to the ground, before Giant-Man suddenly seemed to vanish; in a window up in the Compound, Happy, Lila and Cassie were standing, Lila with a bow and empty quiver still in her hands; and on a heap of debris, there were Nat, Rhodey and Pepper, kneeling, gathered around something – and Tony was nowhere to be seen. Right then, Pepper looked right back at Thor over her shoulder, and it struck him. Tony had fallen.

Suddenly, time was back, and again, all crashed down. Thanos’ voice, still thick with pain, rose above the battle-noise, commanding to the ship to open fire. And all of a sudden, Loki appeared next to his brother, the Tesseract in his hand, and gently took the Gauntlet from his hand. Nebula meanwhile was fighting off attacking Outriders, aiding Clint and Rocket.

“It’s time”, Loki said.

“I know”, Thor replied. “Give me the gauntlet. We have lost enough.”

But Loki smiled at him softly. Thor didn’t understand.

“No, brother.” Loki looked at him. “Destroying one of the stones releases an enormous power. A power I am not sure you could survive.”

“Loki, we are both gods. I have survived the entire force of a star.”

“Yes, but neither of us is immortal. I, however, am also an Ice Giant, in case you forgot. And…thanks to mother…a magician.”

And with those words, he put on the Gauntlet while simultaneously letting the Space Stone slip into its rightful place. The air around him began to vibrate, while a power surge all colours of the rainbow buzzed through him and made him glow. But unlike Thanos before, it didn’t seem to hurt him. He only shone like a supernova, and the look on his face that only Thor could see was all gratitude and pride – and determination. Then, Loki closed his eyes and brought the stones to a blaze that even Thor’s eyes couldn’t stand. All around him, missiles were riddling the ground, and he was about to throw himself over Steve’s unprotected body when he was blasted forward by a surge of orange-golden light.

The missiles stopped. Or rather, were aimed at something else, something above the spaceship. Meanwhile, there was a familiar voice on intercom: “Motherf…”

Thor could hear a gun cocking right next to his ear and Nick Fury materialized right by his sight, and shouted into intercom: “Assemble!”

Above their heads, there suddenly flashed something, and milliseconds later there was a deafening explosion. The entire spacecraft was being blasted into pieces. And through the black-fiery cloud, there shot Carol Danvers, now an almost imperceptibly fast ray of cosmic light, and right behind her, on a Pegasus, Valkyrie, Korg and Miek.

“Looks like we missed a revolution”, Korg remarked in mock disappointment.

In a small group, Stephen Strange, Shuri, T’Challa and Wanda stepped onto the battlefield, two portals appeared on Strange’s right and left, and through them stepped first Wong and Okoye, then M’Baku, and then rows and rows of Wakandan warriors, battle-ready, and threw themselves at Thanos’ forces. Thanos himself was suddenly stirring again, as pain finally seemed to relent a little. With a whoop, Peter Quill, Gamora, Drax, Mantis and Groot materialized. Quill gave Thor a cocky nod and blew an Outrider’s head clean off. Sam Wilson swooped onto the battleground, Redwing already released and set to kill, while he himself held Peter Parker in his arms, then dropped him low next to the group around Tony, while Sam himself landed next to Thor. Peter saw Tony in his wrecked suit and immediately dropped to his knees.

“Mr. Stark!” he shouted. “Mr. Stark, wake up! I’m back, I’m not ashes anymore, Mr. Stark!” Suddenly, Tony’s mouth began to twitch and he opened an eye.

“Kid”, he pressed out. Peter nodded, his eyes teary. Pepper smiled.

“Pep”, Tony said, suddenly a lot more strength in his voice, “ice me. We got a battle to win here.”

But right then, Loki appeared among them, the Gauntlet still on his left hand, now a gap where the Soul Stone used to be.

“She already has, Tony.” He smirked. “But I haven’t.”

And he laid his bare hand on Tony’s deep stab wound, and underneath a soft green sheen, all pain disappeared at once. “There you go”, Loki said softly.

As if slain by an invisible force, the host of Outriders around Scott fell. His suit was broken, he could neither shrink nor grow. But then another, wider circle of Outriders collapsed, and before him stood Hope, Wasp suit and all, pulled him up by the collar and kissed him.

“Everyone”, Tony’s voice sounded on the intercom, “I’m back in. Let’s do this.”

That shook Thor from his rigour, and he looked at Sam when right beside them, seemingly out of nothing, Bucky fell before their feet next to Steve’s still body.

“Barnes, he’s…” Sam started, but Bucky didn’t hear him.

“Steve?!” he whispered, to him only moments that he’d last said his friend’s name. He crawled closer to him and while Thor launched himself back into battle, Sam summoned Redwing and saw to it that the area around them remained clear of Outriders.

Bucky rolled Steve on his back and saw his arm, limp and broken multiple times, and his bleeding face. He grabbed the other, not wounded hand between his metal fingers and looked at Steve like petrified, his eyes red, a silent tear rippling down along his nose, salt adding to the taste of blood and ash on his lips.

“I don’t know what happened, Steve”, he whispered, “but don’t leave me now. I’ve only just got you back.” He squeezed his hand a little tighter. “This can’t be it. This isn’t the end of the line, Steve. Not yet. Please.”

Suddenly, a twitch ran through Steve’s body and his eyes yanked open while he inhaled urgently.

“Steve!” Bucky whimpered, and, letting everything go, he buried his face in the nook of Steve’s neck.

“Buck”, Steve breathed. “I would never leave you.”

“Your arm…”

“Never mind my arm, Buck. We gotta finish this.”

And, slightly louder so he was audible on intercom, he said: “It’s Cap; I’m back in.” “Friday”, Tony came in, “release Frappuccino Protocol.”

A small projectile was released from the Compound. It was aimed right at Steve. Some feet above him, it dropped something off, then returned. On Steve’s lap there landed a matte, blank Vibranium shield, round like his old one but completely unadorned except for a small raised star in its centre.

“Hope you like it, Cap”, Tony said. “We can only do this if we stand together.”

“We do”, Steve replied quietly, grasping the shield in his right and, supported by Bucky, rose up.

Suddenly Carol came in. “Ready down there?! It’s time to finish this.” And she made a start by blasting a gap into a host of Outriders.

Thanos was about to get up, just when Wanda and Nebula came running towards him, Wanda thrusting him back down with a red energy wave, crying “You took everything from me!”, while Gamora jumped onto him, shouting for Nebula, who followed suit. “The day has finally come”, Gamora said to her, kneeling on the Titan’s chest. Nebula only nodded, but they both knew. And while Wanda was keeping Thanos under control, Nebula and Gamora looked at one another, then set their blades to his neck and hacked through.

It was as though all of his army suddenly lost their orientation. They ran around wildly, and, having no spacecraft to return to, snapped their jaws at anything, even one another, or tried to take flight. Thor and Steve now shared Stormbreaker and the new shield to equal parts, and Bucky couldn’t believe his eyes the first time he saw his friend summon lightning from the ashen sky.

Within minutes, some more strikes, thrown axes and shields, fired arrows, portals, metal fists, jet blasters and punches, they were slain unto the last one, leaving nothing but corpses and horrible memories.

***

A thin grey light tickled his eyes open. It was barely dawn. Accompanied by the soft trickle of raindrops on the window, the record player cracked in never ending circles on the dresser. Carefully, Steve slipped out from underneath the duvet and went to take the needle off the record and switch off the player. Suddenly there was a low, muffled cry, then a broken whimper. “No…I know him… He is my friend… Don’t…don’t make me hurt him, don’t, please, no… No!”

With a terrified scream, Bucky yanked his eyes open and stared blankly into the void, panting, hair sticking to his sweating forehead, crying, his right hand white-knuckling the blanket – until another one gripped it and gently loosened its grip.

“Buck”, Steve murmured, kneeling on the bed, “Bucky, I’m here. Come back to me. Everything’s alright, you’re only…”

Bucky’s eyes found his and refocused, slowly but surely, before closing.

“…dreaming”, he whispered, swallowed and exhaled deeply.

“Yeah”, Steve replied with a tiny nod while lying back down. “I’m here, and I’m not leaving you. Never again, Buck.” And he reached around the body that lay curled up next to him, still tense from fear. “Never.”

Bucky felt small in his arms, shaken by the nightmare falling off of him in tears and coughs. It took a while until he finally stilled and his breathing became deep and even again. Steve already thought he had gone back to sleep when he suddenly turned around to face him. “Remember when we used to lie like this, almost eighty years ago… You were so tiny, and always so cold, sometimes in the nights in winter I was afraid you would just…freeze to death and never wake up again if I didn’t keep you warm…” He smiled at Steve with a soft sadness in his tired eyes that were still red from weeping.

“Hey”, Steve nudged him, “a part of me’s still cold.” And he pushed his left arm that had lain underneath him above the duvet, spreading the light, cool, greyish vibranium fingers, and Bucky closed the gap between them and his own metal hand while puffing a quiet chuckle.

“Punk”, he muttered fondly.

“Jerk”, replied Steve before breathing a kiss onto the corner of Bucky’s mouth.

Some hours later, they were standing side by side at the shore of the lake. There were white veils draped in the trees, and fairy lights were hanging from the branches. Underneath, on the cushiony, mossy ground there were pillows and picnic blankets, and under a white tent a little buffet had been set up. Bruce was busily bustling around it, together with Scott and Cassie, who had taken care of the wedding cake.

“Cassie, time?” Scott asked.

“Ten to ten, Dad.”

“Damn. Bruce, where’s the lemonade?”

“Nebula agreed to get it. But she probably got lost killing something.”

Three months had passed since the battle, and a lot had happened. The Wakandans had returned to their home country to re-establish order; Clint and Scott had returned to their respective families, who had been un-dusted like the rest of half the life in the universe. Thor, Loki, Valkyrie, Carol, Korg and Miek had teamed up to travel across what was basically the entirety of this universe to help restore order and peace to all planets that lacked superheroes. Stephen Strange and Wong had returned to the New York Sanctum. The Guardians, Bruce, Nat, Steve, Tony, Rhodey, Pepper, Nebula, Happy, Bucky and Wanda had mostly remained at the headquarters, supervising the repair works and taking a well-deserved break from avenging. Fury stayed with them. Peter Parker had returned to New York, although he feared that Aunt May would ground him for the rest of his life, and Ned would get killed trying to free him. However, she did not, and returned instead with Peter in tow, whom she had gotten a sick leave – he’d been to space and basically died, he needed the rest. As did most of them.

Quiet life at the Compound did them good.

Bruce and Nat sorted out what had happened throughout the past years and decided to visit Strange in New York some time the next winter; Bruce wanted to see if he could maybe help him to find a solution on how to deal with the Hulk in the future, teach him some meditation techniques or something of that kind. 

The Guardians actually didn’t spend much time at the headquarters but travelled to San Francisco to ‘really experience human life’ and stopped by in St. Charles, Missouri, because Quill wanted to see his hometown and perhaps, if still alive, visit his grandfather.

Wanda spent a lot of time with Pepper and Nat, with whom she trained, talked, watched movies and took long walks through the woods around the lake. It was the first time since Sokovia that she actually got to rest, and allowed her to not only mourn Vision, but also her brother. Everyone was there for her, and gradually, although still grieving, she realized more and more that she _did_ have family, no matter how much she had lost, and that her losses, especially with the support of all the others, made her so much stronger. She was no longer the helpless, abused girl; she was a grown woman, and those that had helped her grow up, those that were her real family, were the Avengers.

She was not the only one who felt that way, although some of the others who did needed some distance from them as well in order to be able to appreciate this family to the fullest. Steve was such a case. For as much as the Avengers had become his family, they were still linked to a lot of pain and trauma in his past. And while they were his family, it took something more for him to ever feel truly at home.

There had never been much time for him and Bucky since Bucky had been healed in Wakanda. But it had been enough for him to realize something; something he had never quite been able to see before. It was in the way Bucky had looked at him from thousands of miles away the few times they had skyped; in his eyes that lit up every time he saw Steve’s face; in Shuri telling him how miserable Buck had been when called to battle once again – that is, until he had learned that Steve was going to be there; in so many little things – the love Bucky felt for Steve. The more Steve allowed himself to see it, the more evidence amassed itself in his memories, reaching back even into their youth. And to be clear, he had always loved Bucky – but Bucky had been _in love_ with him probably for a much longer time than Steve dared to presume. This had begun to dawn on him when Bucky was in Wakanda, but he had never had the heart to bring it up, not to mention that during their Skype sessions they had rarely been alone, both being assisted, Bucky by Shuri and Steve by Natasha, being unable to wrap their heads around how it all worked just yet. However, the more he thought about it, the more he slowly began to requite the way he assumed Bucky felt, although it felt odd in the beginning, and he questioned himself a lot because of it, despite knowing that things were different than they had been in the 1940s. And then, _that_ day had come. And all that had been left were ashes, ashes in a tiny cold bullet on Steve’s neck, and his foolish but undying hope.

After the dusted had returned and Thanos had been defeated, that hope became reality.

In the first morning light after a sleepless night, Steve had knocked on the door of Bucky’s little room on the top floor, which Bucky didn’t like quite that much because of his fear of heights. Bucky’s soft “come in” made Steve’s heart skip a tiny beat, he was just so happy to hear it again. So Steve pushed the door open with his healthy right arm, the left wrapped in a bandage at that point, numb and blackish-blue, and found Bucky ogling out from under the comforter. “Steve”, he said with a bleary smile, crawling out and sitting up.

“Buck.” Steve’s heartbeat made his voice malfunction.

“How’s your arm?” Bucky asked concernedly, peering at him while Steve sat down at the foot of the bed.

“I wouldn’t know”, Steve managed to joke and chuckled, “I don’t feel anything. I’m afraid Thanos completely shattered it. Maybe Shuri can have a look at it.”

“I’m sure she’d be happy to.”

Steve sighed. Bucky looked at him and an awkward little silence came into existence and grew with every second. Finally Steve shook it off his lungs and muttered: “That’s not what I’m here for though, Buck.”

“What is it, buddy?” Bucky asked, his brow furrowed in sudden worry, his entire face almost black and white in the pale lighting.

“Buck, I…” Steve squeezed his eyes shut and shook his head. “I need to ask you something, I…” He looked at Bucky, then into his lap, then back at Bucky. Suddenly Bucky reached for his healthy hand and held it. His palm was slightly sweaty. Steve’s entire body was shaking in a way that he knew only he himself could feel when he closed his fingers around Bucky’s and lifted both their hands up a bit before slowly bending down and softly pressing his dry lips into Bucky’s palm. A noticeable shiver went through Bucky and for a split second, Steve could see the hairs on his arm standing up against the dim light from the window front. Then Bucky pushed out a shaky, broken-voiced “Steve?!” Steve looked at Bucky and hoped that his eyes would just say what he couldn’t, ask what he was too afraid to put into words, and that Bucky would understand. Bucky’s face revealed the hurricane of confusion going on behind it. But then he leaned in towards Steve, and Steve mirrored his movement, forcefully stopping his thumb from rubbing the palm of Bucky’s hand while staring into his wide eyes and suddenly touching Bucky’s lips with his own. A shockwave ran through his body, heightening all his senses tenfold, and he could smell the fresh lavender scent of the bedsheets that still lingered on Bucky’s skin and see galaxies in the ocean blue of his eyes. And he cursed himself for being the oblivious punk he had been for about 90 years.

The following days had been a sunny, warm blur. He flew to Wakanda with Bucky, and it hardly mattered to Steve even when Shuri examined his arm and told him that, despite the serum, it would not heal and would have to be amputated. Bucky suggested the idea of a ‘matching’ bionic arm made of vibranium like his own, and at the time, it sounded like the equivalent of wedding bands to Steve. He didn’t even care about the pain this probably meant because his body didn’t respond to anaesthetics. In the end, Shuri was able to make the procedure practically painless for him by freezing the arm and part of the shoulder, but Bucky was still with him the entire time. For him it was almost therapeutic to see an operation so similar in kind to his own being performed in such a caring, skilled way. Steve took far less time to adjust to the new arm than Bucky probably did back in Siberia; his body accepted the vibranium like an original part of itself, leaving barely any scars. Still they stayed in Wakanda a bit longer, Bucky introduced Steve personally to some of the goats he had already made acquaintance with via Skype, they took long strolls over the plains and watched the sun set from the edge of waterfalls on more than one occasion.

Finally, however, after about almost two weeks, they began to miss the Headquarters and their friends back there and decided to take their leave from Wakanda for the time being.

First thing in the morning on the day after their return, Tony launched in on them at the breakfast table with a round of champagne and, beaming, announced his and Pepper’s wedding to finally take place once the repair works were finished.

A little less than three months later, Nebula let a big glass vessel with pale yellow lemonade down onto the table with a ‘thunk’ and gave Bruce a short, proud smirk and nod.

“At last”, Bruce muttered aside to Scott and Cassie. That was when he caught side of Nat walking by in a stunning, dark red satin dress and almost dropped a silver plate full of lemon lavender cupcakes.

The Guardians stood in a circle around Groot, who had extended hundreds of little branches from his arms across a small dome-like clearing and made tiny lights dance all around it. Steve and Bucky caught jubilant whoops and clapping from Peter Quill, and Thor joined them and whooped even more, proudly – this was the first time this worked, and Groot had practiced for the past four days.

At ten sharp, a burst of red, blue and gold fireworks went off above the Compound, and one red and one blue mark suit shot up into the sky in tight spirals before turning and coming towards the clearing, where they landed and released Pepper and Tony from their insides. Pepper was wearing a cream-white lace dress, Tony a tailored grey three-piece pinstripe suit, and they both couldn’t take their eyes off one another, but at the same time they couldn’t stop laughing at their entrance. Everyone was gathered in the clearing. And everyone meant _everyone at all_.

Bucky and Steve stood at the side, Steve in a ridiculously tight pastel pink dress shirt that Bucky had picked for him, Bucky in a dark turquoise velvet suit and a daisy in his half-up, braided hair that Steve had stuck there “for the mere reason of you looking cute as a puppy dog”, and he had his head on Steve’s shoulder.

There was Clint with his family, next to him Nat and Bruce, inconspicuously holding hands, while Thor stood right next to Bruce and had his massive arm draped around the minute-looking doctor’s shoulder. Thor’s white, breezy linen suit clashed sharply with the all-black, gold-accented costume Loki was donning, while Peter beside him had repurposed his practically unused prom suit. Ned had been invited and could still barely believe it; he stood between his best friend and May beaming in dangerously close concurrence with the morning sun. Next to May stood Harley Keener who was equally overwhelmed but barely let it show. Stephen Strange was there with Wong – invited to the wedding as promised – as well as Scott with Hope and Cassie (Hank and Janet had politely declined the invite), Peter Quill with his left arm around Gamora’s and his right around Drax’s shoulder, and Mantis next to them, talking softly to Shuri until she was shushed by T’Challa, which garnered a giggle not only from her but also from Carol in her Nirvana shirt and Valkyrie in her sharp-looking pantsuit, their little fingers hooked between them, as well as from Korg, with Miek under his arm, who made an odd gargling noise that was perhaps laughter as well.

There was Wanda, right behind Nat and next to Sam, smiling dreamily at Pepper’s fairy-like appearance. Rocket had declined Quill’s offer to sit on his shoulders with a snort and had climbed Groot’s extensions above the clearing instead from where he had the best view of all. Directly underneath him stood Nick Fury, today operating instead of a priest, although he didn’t look so different from one in his ankle-long black leather coat that he wouldn’t even take off for this occasion. Beside him stood Rhodey as best man, joined by Happy and Nebula who were in charge of the rings. Tony and Pepper stood before Fury, repeating after him their oaths that Tony had written himself, and when Nebula was supposed to hand Tony Pepper’s ring she almost dropped it – out of excitement, but only Gamora was aware of that – while Happy looked like a proud father to both Pepper and Tony, and they laughed it off and were almost about to kiss when Steve pulled Bucky aside, grabbed a basket full of white rose petals and thrust it at him, only to whisper then: “Come on Buck, time to be flower boys”, while simultaneously draping flower wreaths onto both their heads, and drew him to the front by the sleeve, a basket of his own in his other hand. “Come ooon!” he urged, barely able to contain a silly giggle at the dumbfounded Bucky. “When Tony said Rhodes was gonna be best man I demanded we be his flower boys!” Now the giggle burst through and Steve grabbed a handful of petals and Bucky’s hand and threw them both up while Tony and Pepper kissed. Finally Bucky joined him with his soft, bubbly laugh while the others started clapping and they threw petals into the air above Tony and Pepper and occasionally at each other while they walked after the bride and groom towards the tent with the food.

“You should wear flower crowns more often”, said Steve in the evening when everyone was slow-dancing in the clearing, gently tucking a strand of stray hair back behind Bucky’s ear, “you look pretty.”

“And without one I don’t?” Bucky teased him.

“Ooh come on, let me be soppy for once”, Steve whined jokingly.

“Stevie, you’re soppy literally all the time”, Bucky reminded him, and, softening, added: “But I don’t mind, because you look like an angel with that tree glow behind you, and I never want to let go of you again.” He nuzzled into the nook of Steve’s neck, his safe place. “By the way”, he continued, slightly muffled, “who taught you to dance like this?” Steve stuck his nose into one of the large, pale blue bellflowers in Bucky’s crown and muttered: “You know exactly who…over seventy years ago, in a tiny apartment in Brooklyn, to prepare me for all the dates with girls I’d never go on…”

In the next morning, Bucky and Steve were in the kitchen making blueberry pancakes for all of them. Because no matter how good Pepper’s were, no blueberry pancake could ever top the ones Bucky made. Steve fished one straight out of the griddle with his vibranium arm that had his old shield in a mini version painted on the shoulder, flapped it through the air for a couple of seconds before he tore it in half and stuffed Bucky’s already opened mouth with the first half before downing his own.

That was when Thor came in. “Everyone ap we table alweady, ma’e?” Steve asked, barely able to speak while chewing.

“Yeah. Well, uh…actually no, that is”, Thor replied, looking at him, face scrunched up. “I’ve looked everywhere for him, but…Loki’s gone.”

***

The Oval Office was empty, the Stars and Stripes hanging heavily along the wall. Suddenly, the door flew open and the president stomped in, crossed the room and flopped heavily into his chair, throwing his legs on the table. Then he leaned back and…his shoes became black boots, followed by an all-black suit on a slim body, a pale face with green eyes and slick, long black hair. Fitted to one of his long, elegant hands was a golden gauntlet with five rainbow stones.

With a mischievous smile, Loki put his thumb and middle finger together.

**Author's Note:**

> Sooo...this is my first work of fan fiction. What got me here? My delusional hopes for actual representation (I'm a gay dude myself), i.e. canon Stucky etc. But quite honestly also just my big love for those two dorks. So here I go, doing as the maestro Seb Stan has recommended one should, writing down what I wish would have happened...
> 
> I hope you like it, and please leave suggestions, ideas and whatever else you'd like to say in the comments :)
> 
> Come and visit me on [ Tumblr ](https://www.tumblr.com/blog/azirafeely) if you like.


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